An article in the Daily Times claims the Somerset County Task Force on Diversity wishes to exclude the non-voting population of ECI from the 2010 Census for proposes of redistricting, assuming it will make the districts fairer. There is no guarantee that their particular district lines will be redrawn, not until the numbers are in. Secondly, the census data is used for much more than just redistricting, for example how much money counties receive from the Feds and the state for prisons, crime prevention, drug prevention, police funding and so on. It would be extremely foolish not to count these inmates. Finally, the officials responsible for counting these inmates will count them, I have no doubt about that. The article does not say what percentage of inmates are eligible to vote; it gives the impression none of them are. If you are going to exclude these inmates in redistricting, you might as well exclude every person not registered to vote, be they too young, illegal, non resident, or what have you. Since that will never happen, I don't see this happening either.
4 comments:
If they're going to use the census to hand out money and to decide political clout, then local people should want to include as many in the count as allowable by law.
Why shoot yourself in the foot?
If you're gonna start the blog up again it looks like you're gonna have to police it too...
Yeah!
You make good points. While the prison population cannot vote, the elected representatives still represent them. The census project is imperfect, but if we begin to exclude certain groups, elected officials will simply find a way to exclude other groups for their own political advantage.
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